Saturday, January 05, 2013

Change and the Church

The old joke goes something
like this.How many Baptists does it
take to change a light bulb? The answer, “None.Why would we want to change anything?”

Change is never easy
and rarely sought, but change is going to happen. We can either adapt to it or use it as a
springboard for innovative and effective ministry. In his book, Innovation and Entrepreneurship,
leadership guru Peter Drucker encouraged leaders to see changes around them as
opportunities for purposeful and systemic innovation. He pointed out seven sources for
innovation: the unexpected,
incongruities, process need, industry and market structures, demographics,
changes in perception, and new knowledge.

Let’s consider how
those in congregational leadership might use these sources to make effective
changes in the church.

First, the unexpected
might be the unexpected success, the unexpected failure, or the unexpected outside
event. Perhaps you begin a new worship
service and people flock to it. Why is
it a success—time, location, style, leadership?
If we know why it works, perhaps we can apply the principles elsewhere. A new ministry may fall. Rather than just sweeping it under the rug,
take the time to do a post-mortem and learn from the experience. An outside event like a natural disaster, a
new business in town that brings in people from another part of the country or
world, or an offer to purchase your property may be the catalyst for
reassessment and repurposing of the church’s resources.

Second, the incongruities
you encounter in your church may be the difference between an assumed reality
and the actual reality. Your church may
have a long history of reaching young adults through its college and single
adult ministries so you continue to budget and staff for those ministries, but
in reality things have changed. Students
no longer live in the local community and choose to commute long
distances. The businesses that drew
single adults have closed. Perhaps it is
time to face reality and allocate those resources in new ways.

Third, the process
that we use to do something may need to be changed. We already see this in the way that the
church does publicity. We once depended primarily
on print media—either done in-house or contracted out—to communicate with
members, guests, and the community. Now
we use digital media and less paper.
What is the next thing that your church needs to discover as a better
means of communication, information, or administration?

Fourth, although we
hate to use the terminology, most church leaders realize that there have been major
changes in the religious “industry” and “market structure” in recent years. We have seen the rise of megachurches (both denominational
and non-denominational), house churches, and new expressions of faith
(including many world religions) in our communities. People have more choices and they are exercising
them. Each church must decide what it
does well, what it can do better, and what it offers to the community that no
other group does. This can provide new
enthusiasm for creative ministry and new venues for your church to pursue.

Fifth, changes in
demographics are both a challenge and an opportunity. As we discovered in the last Presidential
election, age, gender, and ethnicity have a tremendous impact on the electoral
process. The church is not exempt from
these changes and many others. One
significant change is in how we define family.
Most churches are still programming for mother, father, and 2.5 children
while the families that come through our doors (at least one time) are quite
different. There are single parent
families, blended families, and families where grandparents are raising grandchildren. The demographic reality calls for adaptation
and innovation.

Sixth, the changes in
perception, mood, and meaning that the church faces are often external. The church no longer occupies the same place
in culture that it once did. Even for
Christians, the church is only one part of a complicated lifestyle and may not even
be in the top three places where one spends his or her time. We can see this as a negative situation or as
an opportunity to help people redefine or rediscover the place of the church in
their lives. Another change in
perception that impacts the church is the role of women in society. The church’s response to the fact that women
are more highly educated and increasingly prominent in secular leadership can
be positive or negative. We can seize
the opportunities this offers for a fresh wind of the Spirit to move in our
midst or embrace a reactionary stance that stifles giftedness.

Seventh, we can use
the new knowledge available to us to pursue new ministries or to be more
effective in what we are currently doing.
New knowledge may provide us with new tools to communicate, lead, or
educate. All of the new knowledge is not
equally useful, so we will need to be discerning in our evaluation of its worth
but we will miss a great resource if we ignore it.

Life brings
significant changes to us as individuals; some are for the good and some
challenge us to do something different. This
is true for the church as well. What
will your church do this year to address a changing world?

No comments:

About Me

I consider myself an itinerant educator. My time is spent in encouraging and equipping ministers through my work with the Central Baptist Seminary and Pinnacle Leadership Associates. I also do volunteer work with my church in the area of leader development. Other time is devoted to reading, writing, traveling, and spending time with grandchildren and my wife, Rita.